Nonsense. Editors will edit based on whatever style guides they use and what's generally considered "proper" usage while respecting the author's stylistic choices as much as possible.
With respect to this case, I'd have to see a given usage in context but I would probably generally leave it as is.
If I'm editing you I'll try to avoid making a lot of changes that boil down to stylistic choice but I will absolutely change things I (and my references) consider wrong.
ADDED: You can of course personally use language however you want. But others will judge you based on that.
The Wikipedia editor here is not allowing personal use, part of their proposal is to edit quotes too - to me it reads as if the person has problems with compulsion and doesn't want to stop themselves from "correcting people" (which is not correction so much as forcing that editor's own personal linguistic predilections on others).
There methods comprise of robbing others autonomy. (Wording chosen purposefully!).
This part of the editor's process bothered me, too. Overall I agree with his premise and have no problem with what he's doing. In fact, I think he is improving Wikipedia with his edits.
But changing quotations seems like a step too far. I think his practice of changing a quotation to a paraphrasing (where it doesn't really matter if the article includes a quotation or not) is fine (if a little obsessive). But actually changing quotations feels wrong to me.
I do agree with his assessment that including people's grammatical/spelling mistakes in a quotation detracts from what the person said, but I don't think the correct move is to change the quotation to something the person didn't actually say. At most, the "offending" part of the quotation should be removed and replaced with correct usage inside square brackets to indicate the changed/added part was not part of the original quotation. But overall I think he should just leave these instances alone.
> There methods comprise of robbing others autonomy. (Wording chosen purposefully!).
I think you are in a way proving the editor's point, though? Purposefully chosen or not (I did chuckle a little), that sentence is garbage, and if I were to read that in something without knowing or realizing it was a joke, I would take your words less seriously. I would think, if you can't even use language properly, and need to "inflate" your words, maybe your ideas are overinflated too.
On a different note, I don't think we should care about people's "autonomy" when we're talking about a resource like Wikipedia. "Letting people write whatever and however they want" is not a positive trait in an encyclopedia.
Fixing "it's" to "its" transparently in many cases is one thing. More significant changes to what someone presumably meant deserves a [SIC]. Something that's not wrong but isn't your stylistic preference? No way.
> More significant changes to what someone presumably meant deserves a [SIC].
“[sic]”, which is always lowercase, indicates something the current author views as (probably) erroneous or otherwise improper that is left unchanged in the quoted text, to emphasize that the author isn’t endorsing the usage/construction so marked. It doesn’t mark a change.
But, yeah, the basic point is to not change a quote unless it's some trivial mistake. (But you can flag it so that it doesn't look like you're the one who may have screwed up.)
Right, and they're free to do so, just don't try to justify it by saying it's "correct". I'm not saying we should write poorly, or deliberately sloppily, just it's at the author or editor's preference.
I'd support this guy if he said "I hate 'comprised of' and so I am changing it where I can", but the idea that there's somehow a logical argument justifying it is silly. Appeal to authority is particularly silly in the context of linguistics.
If you like MLA style, do that. I personally love a little extra diaeresis and the oxford comma, but I wouldn't make them the law.
>and the oxford comma, but I wouldn't make them the law
Oh, I would :-) But I do reluctantly conform to AP style in certain contexts.
That said, there is a certain appeal to authority mindset if you're looking for mainstream non-fiction (and a lot of fiction as well) publication. Maybe "correct" isn't the right term but "accepted practice" or something along those lines which boils down to more or less the same thing.
The rules of French are not really legally defined; that’s a common misconception. Yeah, there is a state-funded cultural organization in France called the Académie française that claims that regulating the language is part of its mandate, but its “decisions” have no legal effect whatsoever and are widely ignored, even by the government and education system.
The contexts are blog posts and press releases often targeted at journalists, who will often copy-paste sections, so standard company stye is to write in a way that conforms to what they use so they don't need to fix it up.
OP discusses this; the language has not really evolved. Certainly there are some dictionaries that acknowledge the newer confusing usage, but always as an alternate.
Also consider the "why": does this phrase pop up more and more often due to misunderstandings and copy/paste? Or is it because people actually want to change the meaning of the phrase and are doing it consciously? I don't see any evidence of the latter.
Language is important. It's the foundation of communication. I think it's noble to push against inadvertent usage changes that make the language more ambiguous.
Put another way: sure, language evolves as people use it differently. But why is it any more valid to push the language toward using "comprised of" in this new way, than it is to push the language to avoid it?
This is not true at all. Merriam-Webster includes it as its second definition of three [1]. It is not presented as an "alternate" or as confusing or incorrect in any way. To the contrary, there is a usage note at the end emphasizing its validity -- how it is "now somewhat more common in general use".
> I think it's noble to push against inadvertent usage changes that make the language more ambiguous.
But there is nothing ambiguous whatsoever about "is comprised of". Its meaning is crystal clear.
> But why is it any more valid to push the language toward using "comprised of" in this new way
It's not, because they're not "pushing" anything. People are just communicating in the same constructions they've unconsciously absorbed, like they do with most of language. The only people "pushing" are people like this Wikipedia editor, who is trying to impose an exclusionary viewpoint that, for example, the editors of Merriam Webster disagree with.
Are you sure? There appear to have been 90k instances of usage in widely read reference material (e.g. Wikipedia, bar this crusade). I'd say that qualifies.
> I don't see any evidence of the latter.
I'm pretty sure people use it based on the meaning they intend it to have, see prior statement for substantial evidence :P
> sure, language evolves as people use it differently. But why is it any more valid to push the language toward using "comprised of" in this new way, than it is to push the language to avoid it?
I don't think anyone but the Wiki editor is pushing anything. I'm saying use language as you like, just don't try to justify your personal crusade based on "correctness", be it moral or technical. I don't care for that style of usage of "comprised of" either, particularly, but I wouldn't try to tell other people how to write, and I think the meaning and purpose of the phrase is perfectly clear.
You do you, but I think it's insane not to want to have more norms around the particular uses of language. We already barely understand each other (see any political conversation or pseudoscientific debate on the internet where words get thrown around in abandon, with an abundance of ambiguous constructions).
The English/American are culturally less prescriptive around grammar, but other languages (such as French) are often much more prescriptive with it.
Having majored in political science it's rare that political arguments are due to a lack of understanding. They're almost always due to just prioritizing things differently.
I think that's true only when both people have a certain degree of sophistication, but in the vast majority of cases involving laypeople, basic theory (including semantics / working definitions for basic concepts) and reading comprehension skills are probably limiting factors.
ur looking at this from the pov of a linguist...this guy is not a linguist, he is an editor...ppl can use language however they want but i dunno if anyone would write a wiki arty the way im writing this comment...even tho u can perfectly understand what im saying
Right, I'm saying he may prefer a style over another style but it's not technically or morally "wrong", and so arguing absolutes is pointless. As you say, it's fully understood, anything beyond clarity of communication moves into the realm of preference and subjectivity. Even within English wikipedia articles, the Simple English version is going to be markedly stylistically different from main line English wiki.
Why is it ok to be prescriptive with things like spelling of words but not grammar or the meaning of words? If people are using words in a way that doesn't make sense to the reader, such as changing the meaning of them to be the opposite like the word factoid, it's not the reader that is wrong by pointing out that the word has a different meaning than intended. I have no problem calling out such use as being wrong.
> Why is it ok to be prescriptive with things like spelling of words but not grammar or the meaning of words?
It's not.
> If people are using words in a way that doesn't make sense to the reader, such as changing the meaning of them to be the opposite like the word factoid, it's not the reader that is wrong by pointing out that the word has a different meaning than intended.
The reader can say "It was unclear", "I didn't like it", or "that seems like it's opposite to what I would expect", but "wrong" is a silly thing to say. None of these things are even absolute within published English literature, let alone just say American, or UK, English literature. Even if you're following a particular style manual things are ambiguous in many cases.
Not in the slightest. Categorically, he's using prescriptive arguments, which are bunk. Language evolves, people can use it however they want.